questions for you sailors
2 Dec 2012 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouCame across this:
The parts that intrigue me:
12:01 -- the guy's lowering a sail, but the ropes go through holes in a wooden piece. Is that a euphroe? (There was a description of junks using these; I could never find pictures, but that sure looks like how they were described.)
12:30 -- one guy's pulling down, but it looks like two more are pulling on the same rope. Why not all three pulling on the same side of the pulley? Why does one guy pull down and the other two pull sideways? Uh, are they raising sails?
12:32 -- jackpot! guy using tiller.
I've seen descriptions of older (as in, Tang dynasty) chinese ships that it took four or more guys to move the tiller, until they figured out fenestrated tillers. But I've never seen any of the rigging around a tiller, not like this guy with the ropes. Are those just to make it easier to move the tiller back/forth?
Also, there's a shot midway through showing the pilot, where you can see the sails also shifting direction. I can't tell if that's just bad editing or if I'm supposed to get the impression that this change in the sail-angle is related to the change in the tiller. Is it? Or is it a matter of the tiller changing to match what the sailors are doing?
...shows like this are useful for a sense of size and info about the different (later-era) ship styles, but sheesh, I still wish someone had a clip -- with explanation! -- about how and what the pilot is doing when he's steering the ship. It looks like there's a lot more going on than just the hollywood-version where someone stands at the wheel and moves it back and forth.
36:44 -- the railing are OPEN, whut! I've seen on some later-era junks that there was a mid-ships opening in the railing used (from what I gather) to have an easier time loading stuff on/off. Then some kind of board was pulled up or across, to close off the opening as the ship pushed away from the dock. But why would you have an open railing that's just a railing and long stretches of open with netting between them? Is there some functional reason for this, or is this a case of just saving money in construction by not having solid sides along there?
The parts that intrigue me:
12:01 -- the guy's lowering a sail, but the ropes go through holes in a wooden piece. Is that a euphroe? (There was a description of junks using these; I could never find pictures, but that sure looks like how they were described.)
12:30 -- one guy's pulling down, but it looks like two more are pulling on the same rope. Why not all three pulling on the same side of the pulley? Why does one guy pull down and the other two pull sideways? Uh, are they raising sails?
12:32 -- jackpot! guy using tiller.
I've seen descriptions of older (as in, Tang dynasty) chinese ships that it took four or more guys to move the tiller, until they figured out fenestrated tillers. But I've never seen any of the rigging around a tiller, not like this guy with the ropes. Are those just to make it easier to move the tiller back/forth?
Also, there's a shot midway through showing the pilot, where you can see the sails also shifting direction. I can't tell if that's just bad editing or if I'm supposed to get the impression that this change in the sail-angle is related to the change in the tiller. Is it? Or is it a matter of the tiller changing to match what the sailors are doing?
...shows like this are useful for a sense of size and info about the different (later-era) ship styles, but sheesh, I still wish someone had a clip -- with explanation! -- about how and what the pilot is doing when he's steering the ship. It looks like there's a lot more going on than just the hollywood-version where someone stands at the wheel and moves it back and forth.
36:44 -- the railing are OPEN, whut! I've seen on some later-era junks that there was a mid-ships opening in the railing used (from what I gather) to have an easier time loading stuff on/off. Then some kind of board was pulled up or across, to close off the opening as the ship pushed away from the dock. But why would you have an open railing that's just a railing and long stretches of open with netting between them? Is there some functional reason for this, or is this a case of just saving money in construction by not having solid sides along there?
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Date: 3 Dec 2012 04:03 pm (UTC)http://www.historicalseaport.org/
The contact page only gives one email address, but if you write that addy and explain that you have these questions, they might get you in touch with the crew, or someone else who is knowledgeable. Don't be shy to ask, at least; their main role is public outreach and education.
Good luck!
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 4 Dec 2012 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 Dec 2012 06:09 pm (UTC)12:01 -- the guy's lowering a sail, but the ropes go through holes in a wooden piece. Is that a euphroe?
It is, or a near relation (euphroe usually more suspended, but depends where you need it and why.
12:30 -- one guy's pulling down, but it looks like two more are pulling on the same rope. Why not all three pulling on the same side of the pulley? Why does one guy pull down and the other two pull sideways? Uh, are they raising sails?
Looks like they're finishing raising/tightening up a sail. The technique is for the first person to pull directly on the halyard to create slack, while the others provide the pull to hold it there and get it tied off correctly. They're using block and pulley which is a much easier way to tighten sail.
12:32 -- jackpot! guy using tiller.
I'm not seeing a tiller there, and ships like that were usually wheel steered (all the rudder rigging hidden down off the deck), but could be converted to tiller in cases of absolute necessity, usally involving a spare yard and a lot of rope.
Also, there's a shot midway through showing the pilot, where you can see the sails also shifting direction. I can't tell if that's just bad editing or if I'm supposed to get the impression that this change in the sail-angle is related to the change in the tiller. Is it? Or is it a matter of the tiller changing to match what the sailors are doing?
The sails change according to wind direction, strength and desired heading of the boat - but ideally the person at helm (tiller) dictates all. I can explain the helm's actions in more detail, but how much do you know of the mechanics of sailing, because I don't want to info-dump at you?
36:44 -- the railing are OPEN, whut!
I imagine that allows for deck guns. Probably retro-fitted.
Hi, I am a nerd and also a sailor.
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Date: 3 Dec 2012 06:42 pm (UTC)Anyway, I was going by the voiceover at 12:32, and the talk that a ship is more maneuverable by using a tiller as opposed to a wheel. Which given the schema I've seen of wheels versus the older rudder+really big honking stick, makes sense. But if that guy's not using a tiller, what is he doing? Is he actually doing something related to the sails themselves (hence the quick shot of the sails changing angle) and it's nothing at all to do with steering? It looks like he's at the very far point of the stern, but I could be completely wrong on that, it just seems like he's up high enough that this is where you'd usually put the pilot. uhhhh.
PLEASE INFO-DUMP. GIMMEEEEEE. If you know what the helm does, and can explain it, I WOULD SO WORSHIP YOU. omg capslock of love attack. But seriously! anything I can find uses jargon I don't know, and being a pilot seems to be an area that's specialized enough that even the friends who are sailors aren't entirely savvy as to what mysteries are going on with the pilots. Or can only speak in general terms. Not sure.
ETA: predominantly interested in tiller/rudder steering, not wheel-steering, since I'm focusing on eastern sailing (and trying to extrapolate, given there's not a lot in English about the more indepth aspects of chinese junks). Apparently eastern ships did not use wheels, but then, the majority were coastal or near-coastal and needed as much maneuverability as possible. So if wheels didn't have the immediate responsiveness of tiller, that would make sense why eastern ships didn't use that tech-change.
also, 12:30 -- one of the things took me awhile to figure out (and I suspect I'm still not figuring out correctly) is the raise/lower. On western ships, sometimes it looks like sails are pulled UP to bundle them, get them out of the way, whatever the term is. But on the chinese junk pictures I've seen, the sails appear to be lowered. Seems to me that it's a matter of function in terms of which you want to do faster -- it's slower to raise sails out of the way, but probably a lot less difficulty to drop them quickly to react to wind. But if sails are dropped quickly but the effort goes into raising them slowly...?
I keep thinking back to my sailing friend's comment that all aspects of a ship are functional, and if it's there, it's there because someone ran into a problem and this was the way they came up to solve it. Pretty is a distant twenty-seventh place compared to functionality. Which makes me wonder what the functionality is of why it seems like some sails are... trimmed? bundled? what is the term, I knew it a minute ago... put out of the way! upwards, versus downwards.
anyway, yes, infodumping is greatly appreciated. go ahead, treat me like I haven't a clue and am a dry sponge ready to suck up more information. I am very sponge-like, actually.
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Date: 3 Dec 2012 09:40 pm (UTC)So.
HOW SAILING WORKS
Sails work as aerofoils, essentially.
Therefore directions available to a ship under sail are dictated by the wind direction, because you have to angle the ship in order to fill the sail, and different angles achieve different effects. These are your points of sail.
This dictates how close you can get to facing into the wind without the boat going into irons. This is when the sails empty, the ship slows, stops or starts going backwards. Your warning is when the sail edges start to flap - this is luffing.
Now you have a 40-80 degree zone in which the ship cannot sail. Modern racer dinghies and yachts (Bermuda rig ) can get up to about 40 degrees, gaff rig like junks can't et quite as close, a square rig like the video can only get 80 or less.
The helm is both the rudder/tiller and the person(s) controlling it. This controls everything else about the ship. Pilots are a different breed entirely - they are experts on certain areas, who will either come on board to guide the helm through tricky waters or remain on a pilot boat to lead another ship through the correct path. I think this is your point of confusion - two different people, two different functions.
Now, the helm's entire job is to get the ship going in the direction he wants, as fast as he can get her to go.
The rudder and sails interplay - you need to adjust the sails to keep the full and this may mean tightening/releasing or slightly changing the tiller direction.
In strong winds you need to reduce sail - by reefing (reducing sail area) or setting smaller sails. In light winds you need to increas sail area, by loosening sails and setting extra ones. Some sails will be furled completely to allow other sails to be set at different points of sail, especially on square rigged ships.
HOW RIGGING WORKS
The three main types of rig are worked in different ways.
Bermuda rigging is triangular with the sail attached along mast and boom. Depending on the type, the sails will be reefed by wrapping it around the boom or mast. To take the sail in completely it will be dropped to deck or furled around the boom or mast.
Gaff rigging is four-pointed and the sail is suspended from the spar, attached along mast and boom. These are usually reefed and furled by furling along the boom or using reef point ties to reduce sail area.
Square rigging is also four pointed and suspended on a yardarm from the yards (masts). They can be furled and reefed in a number of ways depending on the ship in question. They can be taken down completely (with or without the yardarm), reefed by reef points or replaced with smaller sails. Square rigs have much more sail flexibility because of the size and crew number of these ships.
Sails are always reefed or furled in the most convenient way - most yachts and dinghies reef and furl around the mast and boom because these are easily done afloat. Gaff rigs tie off because that's the easiest bit to reach afloat. Square rigs have more interchangeable sails and can be reefed and furled around the yardarm from above because the masts and yards can be climbed.
And I think I might have killed the comment function, so ask away about specifics, keeping in mind that I've mostly sailed bermuda rig (and an elderly, cranky gaff rig oh my god disaster).
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 12:34 am (UTC)alright, wait, wait, wait. You say: Gaff rigging is four-pointed and the sail is suspended from the spar, attached along mast and boom -- which reminds me of something I caught in passing awhile back (but not that far back, because the whole white leisure suit is a little before my time): http://youtu.be/z6Kh315YMo8
I'm vaguely aware that "lateen" means "not square" and that ships with the triangular sail are "lateen" -- but is this a mistake, and there's actually another name for sails using gaff rigging? It's because Burke mentions "lifting the spar over the mast" and holy hell I am so not able to visualize that. (Is he just exaggerating or not really explaining it well?) But other than the generally trapezoidal shape of junk rigs, they do have a similar upper-beam (the spar?) that leads off the mast.
Frex: the treasure ships (http://ioacs.org/boat/zhengheboat.html) look like a combination of square (there's sail behind the mast, instead of next to it, if that description makes sense) but the bulk of the sail is off to the side. Compared to the Ningbo (http://ioacs.org/boat/ningboboat.html) which is more square-sail like, versus the Fenzhou (http://ioacs.org/boat/fengzhouboat.html) which looks like off-centered square.
Then you get to the Fujian (http://ioacs.org/boat/fujianboat.html) which looks more like the standard "junk" rigging that's seen in so many pictures & has pretty much become iconic. But it's still got the mast kind of a little way behind the sail, and my (very very general) understanding is that bermuda means "one side of triangle is along mast, one side along boom" and square is "generally rectangular with mast dividing the sail vertically" -- so is gaff that inbetween that's neither mast-off-to-side nor mast-in-center?
And how the hell do you swing around the sail, in the case of the Fujian? I've always been under the impression (thank you, hollywood) that if we're talking about wind direction, the wind should hit the mast and then the sail. Not sail smushed up against mast and sandwiched between wind and mast. Or does that just happen sometimes, and it's okay? Because seems like the rigging on a junk ship like the Fujian would mean ending up with sail smushed against the mast, if you swung it the other way (from what it is in the picture).
Or is that where you perform the impossible feat of lifting the spar and whatever else OVER the mast? Because that, I'm just not seeing. Or at least, I haven't had enough alcohol yet to see it.
(I should note that ships combine two of my greatest loves: architecture and practical physics. When I was a freshman in high school, my first career choice was to be a naval architect. I ended up dropping that dream though, thanks to a variety of responses, among them, "you'll never make any money at it," and "you have to join the US Navy to do that," and "that's all math, and girls aren't any good at math". To this day, I cannot believe I actually swallowed the last excuse for so long.)
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 07:31 am (UTC)head to wind -- okay, I got nothing. Into the wind?
athwart -- perpendicular to the keel?
return to the centre of the boat -- meaning... swing around so they're parallel with the keel?
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 10:11 am (UTC)Athwart - basically, yes. The thwarts are the braces that run across the ship.
Return to centre - pretty much. Most noticable in centre-sheeted bermuda rigs, where the point of control for the sail runs from the centreline of the boat. In other types the sail will still sit slightly to windward, because the controlling sheets will have been left pulled to the side.
In really small dinghies with no stays you can sometimes get the boat sitting with the back to the wind and the sail straight out the front, but this usually means you've broken it.
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Date: 5 Dec 2012 04:20 am (UTC)I don't live anywhere near the coast now, but I can see me returning to my hometown city & going past the marina and being all, "look for a broken dinghy! there's got to be one!" Or maybe I'll just lie and say I saw one, just to confuse my sister.
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 08:11 am (UTC)Junks overcame the problem by swinging their (much shorter) yards around the mast - your sail is stiffened with battons, so it's rigid and you don't get the problem the lateen sails have on tack and can swing it round to allow the airflow straight over the sail. That older style of junk wouldn't have done much heading to windward, but they weren't working in waters where that was important - once it becomes important to have that you see modern gaff rig develop on the junks, with the yard set nearer the corner. In both cases, the yard is suspended from the head of the mast, so you can pull the yard along on the mast by the way you set the sail on the bottom corner.
With the battened sail, the edges are stiff, so you don't need to rely on the mast to direct airflow.
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Date: 5 Dec 2012 04:27 am (UTC)I did notice in the clip from Connections that after the sail is mostly brought around, the far edge of the triangle has to be tied down. It comes that close to getting away from the sailor, though. I guess that would count for one way to make your life interesting.
That older style of junk wouldn't have done much heading to windward, but they weren't working in waters where that was important - once it becomes important to have that you see modern gaff rig develop on the junks, with the yard set nearer the corner.
Ahhh, so that's why in the older chinese ships (up to about mid-Ming dynasty) the mast is anywhere from center to just a little off-center? The majority of the shipping was river or canal, and some coastal. In the Qing dynasty you start getting into the Zheng clan and deep-water trade coming out of Hong Kong -- so the harsher waters/winds of deep ocean is the reason (or at least a possible major factor) for the way the sails seem to slowly drift farther and farther off-center of the mast?
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Date: 5 Dec 2012 08:19 am (UTC)The sail has to move closer to parallel to the side of the ship the closer to the wind you want to go, so that's how you get the movement along the mast and then to gaff, yes.
The deep water and stronger winds aren't less of a factor than the direction of the prevailing winds - the further you go the more you need the ability to sail to windward to get home, and the off-centre sail lets you do that.
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Date: 3 Dec 2012 06:50 pm (UTC)Also, hello fellow sailor :)
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Date: 3 Dec 2012 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 Dec 2012 07:12 pm (UTC)This is what the tiller on the Lady Washington (in the video) looks like:
If you add an extra pivot point and a vertical lever to the end of that tiller, and then move the tiller below deck, you get a whipstaff, which looks like this:
The guy in the video moving the tiller on the Lady Washington has to throw his whole body into it, but I can move the tiller on the ship I sail on with one hand by using our whipstaff.
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 12:37 am (UTC)It's only recently I found out how shipwheels have anything to do with steering (rudder). Which is crazy considering I rebuilt a steering wheel and mechanism on an Austin-Healey when I was in college, and yet never once connected "how these parts work" with other wheels used for steering, like on ships.
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Date: 3 Dec 2012 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 01:23 am (UTC)Whilst reaching, the CE being set further back, will encourage a small craft to bear up into the wind, i.e. strong weather helm. ... The helmsman, can reduce weather helm significantly, simply by sheeting out the mainsail. Sheeting out may appear to create an inefficient belly in the sail, but it is often a pragmatic alternative to having a heavy helm. A swing keel lifted halfway is the perfect treatment for weather helm on a gaffer.The usual adjustments to mast rake, or even bowsprit length may be made to a gaffer with persistent heavy weather (or lee) helm.
Ignoring the total uselessness of that paragraph for anyone who isn't a lifelong student of the art, the other influence is my own experience as a coxswain for crew. Bear with me on the physics, because maybe I'm totally wrong but it made such an impression on me that in researching ships, it seems like this has to come into play at some point.
If you're not familiar with crew shells, take an eight-person shell, about 64' long. It'll be maybe a foot & a half wide & about that deep (depending on designer). But generally speaking, this is a design that can be thrown off-keel very very easily. (Just turning your head to look out the boat can throw off the balance, in some of the higher-class shells.)
The basic assumption all beginner coxswains make when steering is 1) that you steer when you get close enough to see something (so wrong!) and 2) that you can turn sharply by hanging on the rudder. this is ignoring the notion that something longer than the longest stretch limousine could ever "turn sharply" but I did it, all beginner coxswains do. It took my physics professor plus another more experienced-coxswain to teach me that a rowing shell is only stable when all oars are in the water. When oars are out of the water, the boat isn't stable, and pulling on the rudder "breaks the keel" -- that is to say, breaks the line of the keel, and now the boat is off-keel. So you only steer when the oars are in the water, and as soon as the oars hit the finish of the stroke, you slam the rudder back to neutral, and then return to steering when the oars enter the water again.
Alright, that all said, when I read that bit about the weather helm & lee helm, that's what I thought of. It makes sense to extrapolate that the ship is stable at X point, and that breaking the line of the keel via rudder would cause some instability. I guess in this case, the sails would be equivalent to oars, in terms of how they can actively contribute to or detract from the ship being level (as opposed to deadweight like imbalanced riggers or imbalanced stationary weight in the hold).
So is this something the helm is thinking about & is that related to weather/lee helm, in terms of the ship's gunwhales dipping to port or starboard and/or dipping further based on the rudder breaking the ship's line? Or can the rudder be set to even the most severe angle and everything else being equal, it'd still have no impact on the ship's balance, because it's too small a factor compared to sails, weight distribution, etc?
Yes. These kinds of thoughts do keep me awake at night. Pondering happily, but awake.
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Date: 4 Dec 2012 08:29 am (UTC)The more pressure on the sail, the more speed, but the more the ship will heel up windward - this is why you see racers piling the crew over to the windward side to balance the boat down. Weather helm is the result of the sail being too full/too pressured and is more of an issue on a bigger ship (dinghies, yachts and small keelboats will have hit 'Oh shit we're on our ear, dump sail' before the ability to steer is much affected).
A lot of craft have a moveable keel/centreboard, that lets you change the profile of the keel in the water - you need less on a reach or run, as much as you can get when the sail is highly pressured on the beat.
What the paragraph writer is not saying is that if your helm is so heavy that you need to sheet out (loosen the sail), the boat is also heeled so far that life is rapidly becoming too interesting. Tall ships and junks have ballast to hold them down in the water and are more vulnerable to the helm going heavy than to catastrophic heeling. However, you can do it, and it's a lot harder to pull it back from the edge, so their helms tend to be somewhat more cautious about it. Catamarans, in contrast, can be sailed with one hull in the air if you want to.
And yes, you can change direction abruptly by hanging on the tiller, and this is why the two things you hear me say most while dinghy coaching are 'Tiller away from you, AWAY FROM YOU!' and 'Let go the mainsheet, LET IT GO!' because the immediate reaction to the boat heeling up in most people is to yank everything in towards them, tightening the sail and turning the back of the boat into the wind. Which in that situation leads to a) boat heeling over even more and b) jibe (boat changing direction with sails full) and that leads to c) capsize.
It is thankfully a lot harder to do that on a ship.
ETA: And I shouldn't be talking about sailing before coffee because then I mix up windward and leeward. *facepalm*
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Date: 5 Dec 2012 05:28 am (UTC)That said, the rest of the explanation, okay, I think I got the gist (thank you! clearly you've been a coach, since you don't mind my not-knowing and uncertain questions). One thing I do twig on is something my friend K also mentioned, and I've still not got a sense of: when the boat jibes. K was mostly talking about the boom swinging around and knocking someone clear off the ship, which had me curious because the pictures I've seen of chinese junks, the bottoms of the sails are at least a foot or two over everyone's head. (And often times, there's also a sun-cover in the way, too, but then, a lot of the junks it seems like the cargo is in the hold and everyone sleeps on-deck, from what I can tell.)
But the way you put it, it sounds like to jibe (jibing?) is not a purposeful thing? As in, the wind shifts suddenly, and takes the sail with it? Or is it more that the sails are full and the shift in direction is too sudden and throws everything off? ...I'm trying to figure out whether with most things equal, jibing is the result of crazy wind-changing directions, or of an inexperienced helm trying to change direction too quickly and/or without proper prep. Or could be either, but the helm would get the blame anyway?
Which makes me wonder about how these things get passed along, how everyone knows what to do. That's more important for my purposes (as a writer) than jargon (since the story doesn't even take place in English, so jargon is kind of catch-as-catch-can or it'll be horribly out of place). I've seen descriptions for some of the larger merchant ships, where the pilot couldn't actually see all that well past the sails, or was in a nice warm room with the whipstaff or tiller and... still couldn't see all that well. So a navigator would be up on the top deck, and yell down what to do next. (Poor navigator, stuck out in the open.) But if whomever is steering chooses to change direction to any degree, it sounds like the sheets also have to be adjusted to take advantage of this. Does the navigator or helmsman have to yell every time s/he does something? Or does the sailing master/captain/whomever watch the helm and anticipate?
I don't think I need a book on jargon quite so much as something that walks me through how the various people on a ship understand, anticipate, and follow each other. Hrmmm. That kind of thing doesn't get shown in a lot of videos, since it's usually just background fixings. ("you, in the back, look like you're busy being sailors! pull on some ropes or something!") Fiction will give you more info, it's just that it's hard to find fiction that doesn't either romanticize it heavily, gloss everything, or use so much jargon I haven't the faintest clue what anyone's doing anywhere. Other than being on a boat. Maybe. Sometimes it's hard to tell, with all the jargon. (Heh.)
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Date: 5 Dec 2012 12:39 pm (UTC)One thing I do twig on is something my friend K also mentioned, and I've still not got a sense of: when the boat jibes ... I'm trying to figure out whether with most things equal, jibing is the result of crazy wind-changing directions, or of an inexperienced helm trying to change direction too quickly and/or without proper prep. Or could be either, but the helm would get the blame anyway?.
Ah, no, jibing is a totally legitimate way to turn the boat, it's just that you really don't want to do it without knowing what you've got yourself into, because once you start turning downwind everything happens very fast.
So. There are two ways to turn a boat - into the wind (tack), or away (jibe). In each case, the tiller will be hard over either towards or away from the helm, the sails will change sides, and in smaller boats the crew and helm will also cross the boat to be on the windward side for balance.
Square rigs actually jibe (wear) in bad weather by preference to tacking, because its dead easy to do and you don't have to play about with backing sails - remember they can't get nearly as close to the wind as other rigs so tacking takes a lot of skilled sail setting. Junks, particularly the non-gaff styles, may well be similar although you'd need to get someone who's sailed one to confirm. Bermuda, gaff, and lateen rigs are more vulnerable to gusts and helm error in a jibe, so will tack by preference if the conditions are getting too hairy.
When I'm teaching kids to jibe in bermuda rigged dinghies, where jibes are most dangerous, I explain to them that there are four kinds:
1) The one you did intentionally and did right.
2) The one you did intentionally and cocked up.
3) The one you did by accident.
4) The one where it all goes horribly wrong.
The one you intended to do is just the opposite of tacking - you turn the head of the boat away from the wind instead of through it. However, it is much less simple than tacking because the sails stay full as the boat turns. So you are turning at speed, usually off your fastest point of sail on that tack, onto your fastest point of sail on the other - so you're already heeling, you don't want to take in much sail because then you'll lose speed and heel more, and your sail is about to cross the boat unpredictably and very very fast. And if you are heeling too far when that happens the sail will hit the water and capsize you. This is also where people get hit with the boom. You're extremely vulnerable to gusts - I once spent an entertaing day teaching jibing with massive gusts coming in. Even in storm sails, we did a lot of swimimng.
The key to a sucessful jibe is to straighten up the tiller far sooner than you think you need to, before the turn is complete and control the sail at all costs. If you look at footage of Ben Ainslie jibing a Finn (use the 'gybe' spelling for youtube), for example, you'll see him grab the centre sheeting and flick the sail across as he changes sides, to prevent it slamming over by itself and unbalancing the whole thing.
The whole thing is a lot easier in a square rigged tall ship or a junk but the sheer speed of the maneouver means everyone still needs to be paying attention. There are plenty of stories of inattentive tall ship and yacht crew getting hit by the boom on a jibe. It take more effort to get hit on a junk because their sails are rigged higher (to avoid the high fore and aft decks) and with their battened sails they may not even have a boom - you could still get clocked, but it won't kill you, which the solid boom on a tall ship or yacht easily could.
ETA: There is, hoewever, a particularly catastrophic gybe where the top of the sail flicks over but the bottom doesn't, which is known as the 'Chinese gybe'. The name dates from when European ships started encountering junks, although nobody's clear whether they were seeing the junks do it, or whether it was the conditions in Chinese waters that led to it. I would suspect conditions, as its hard to do that with a battened sail, but either way, unless you're very good, its very difficult to recover from, as everything is on the wrong side and under tension. If it hadn't broken (it often happens when the vang/kicker that holds the boom down breaks).
Which makes me wonder about how these things get passed along, how everyone knows what to do.
It's basically all about the shouting. Once you have more than one person in a boat, the helm must communicate everything. So if I was helming with J as crew and want to jibe, I'd call 'Jibe', when he confirms, I call 'Jibe on three. One. Two. Three' (traditionally the call is 'Bearing away' but we work better on the count of three), put the tiller over on three and call 'Jibe ho' as the sail starts moving.
At speed, and especially when the jibe is accidental, the tiller and boom going over may happen all together, so you don't get the chance for the last call or you combine calls. With an inexperienced helm and crew the jibe may instead be accompanied by the instructor screaming 'GET YOUR HEAD DOWN' and some manhandling.
Once you get into the big ships with multiple sails and crew, the helm is no longer solely responsible for the ship - the master and the officer of the watch are in charge, and will be telling them and the rest of the crew what to do and when (especially when the helm is belowdeck). For minor adjustments the master will just shout, or have the word passed to the person responsible, for orchestrating a full change of direction different navies will have different methods, but the sequence for command is always to call what you're going to do, call as you do it, and call when you complete it. If someone comes back on the first call with a negative and the turn is not for an emergency, everything is held off until the issue is cleared.
On British Navy and Merchant Navy ships, whistle patterns were common, as they carry over the wind (this is where not whistling backstage comes from, as so many stagehands were retired sailors). I'm not sure what they'd use in junks.
Not every helm adjustment requires a sail adjustment - there's a lot of interplay, and both are constantly adjusted. For minor helm adjustements, the helm may not need to communicate anything, the persons responsible for the sail will adjust the setting in response to the changed behaviour of the sail before the word reaches them. Remember that an experienced crew can more of less anticipate everything that the helm/master will do in any given conditions, and the more experienced the crew the faster they will react.
For instance, if I go out on one of the high performance dinghies with J, we skip a lot of the calls that we beat into the kids, because we've been sailing together the guts of 15 years. If I play with the tiller to get rid of a luff in the mainsail, he'll have started compensating the jib sail before I finish the tiller movement.
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Date: 5 Dec 2012 06:45 pm (UTC)Then I found http://youtu.be/yqwb4HIrORM and my geeky heart just went pitter-patter. Right up to the point where the two scientists are all, "oh, but you don't really need to know this stuff." Clearly someone was asking them the wrong questions! The right question would've been one that got the answer of, "okay, you don't need to know this to sail, but you should know it anyway because SCIENCE IS AWESOME". Instead they made it sound like all their work was just, y'know, of no real interest to anyone because it's just too nitty-gritty. *gnashes teeth* Still can't believe that. The scientists I've known, you put a camera in front of them, and they can't wait to find some way to make everyone see whatever miniscule and tiny set of details they're dealing with are in fact awesome. Because science!
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Date: 5 Dec 2012 11:53 pm (UTC)But if you want to give yourself nightmares, this is Telefonica narrowly escaping a knockdown on an unexpected gybe. They lost a rudder and half their batons on that one.
That is terrible explanation of sailing. Terrible. This one with the adorable and endlessly patient Hunter Lowden is pretty nice (I particularly like the gentleman who knows how it works, but can't figure out how to explain it). The next one in the series explains how to race a 49er, which is essentially 'have no fear, be a crazy person'.
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Date: 6 Dec 2012 05:37 am (UTC)Although I then ended up watching a documentary on the 3rd leg of the Volvo Race from 2011-12, especially the Straits of Malacca. So first there's the hitchhiker bat sleeping onboard, then someone gets hailed and questioned by the Indonesian coast guard, then another one runs over a net, and then there's the one-eighty shot of the Straits looking like a damn parking lot. And THEN there's a water spout!
All I can say is, if this were fiction, the average reader would be all, "okay, you were doing great, but the water spout is a bit much, don't you think?" And probably have to cut the part about the bat, too. *facepalm*
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Date: 6 Dec 2012 11:32 am (UTC)The Volvo Ocean Races are nuts. Plain nuts.
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Date: 6 Dec 2012 05:45 am (UTC)There is always a lot of screaming things like "GET YOUR HEAD DOWN" or "HEADS UP" or even "DUCK!" when novices are involved. No matter what the activity is.
Watching the documentaries on the Volvo race are mostly interesting for the various crewmen (always men, I note with some annoyance) talking about what was going on at such-and-such a point. They're not even half as heavy on the jargon as folks who do historically-accurate tall ships, but then, neither is my friend K, who was former Navy so he's not all archaic terms that used to be English and are now sailing-only. Though I do wish the documentaries had included more infographic visuals, instead of just every now and then showing the fleets' placement on a map. There were some references to things happening for which I had to rely on the video (which wasn't always clear) to figure out that they meant the sail had torn, or something had snapped. So, some jargon in there.
But more useful to me are the times they talk about weather conditions and wind, especially cloud formations, rain, squalls, and dead calm. That's the kind of thing that's pretty much unchanged in centuries of sailing (that you have, y'know, weather) even if we understand the causes and science slightly better, now. But despite all the computer equipment below-deck, they still have to rely on a certain amount of guesswork. It's when they describe the guesswork, and what they had to bet on, that I learn the most in terms of the mindset and factors at play, for use in a story. All the jargon in the world, imo, won't save a story if I don't a clue what makes sailors freak the hell out -- and the documentaries are pretty good at letting the sailors speak frankly about where and when they did freak the hell out. *takes notes*
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Date: 6 Dec 2012 12:16 pm (UTC)So much of ocean-going sailing is second-guessing what the weather will do next, under sail or engine. The meterology just isn't there yet.
flat again.
The Volvo documentaries are great, because they assume that if their audience was interested enough to watch, they want to know EVERYTHING. Also it's hard to hide how freaked your team were when there's video evidence of them clinging on for dear life as the ship went on her ear. By the by, if you're liking the Volvo stuff, the Camper team site is very nicely done, with some nice bits explaining why they chose certain people and what skills they wanted them for.